Netrunner: Down the White Nile (engl.)

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release ofDown the White Nile, the second Data Pack in theKitara CycleforAndroid: Netrunner The Card Game!

Situated along the equator, on the northern shores of Lake Victoria and near the source of the White Nile, the fast-growing city of Jinja is destined to become a major global power. There, the nations of the Sub-Saharan League have gathered a small army of workers. Their tasks? To help the world's second beanstalk grow through and out of its early stages of construction. To replicate the closely held secrets of Weyland's buckyweave. And to raise the colossal tower until it brushes against the heavens.

But while so much of the city's activity aims toward the skies and beyond, there's plenty happening on the ground—and behind the locked doors of Jinteki's Kisu2 Hospital. The biotech giant has established a good survival rate for patients suffering from the HV-X hemorrhagic virus, but how have they done this? Bacteria and viruses (both physical and virtual) feature heavily inDown the White Nile, as the Data Pack's sixty new cards (including three copies each of twenty different cards) continue to explore every aspect of life along the shores of Lake Victoria, even touching on the boundary between life and death.

Additionally, you'll find a new Shaper identity, programs, ice, a devious ambush, and an agenda that pays the Corp even if the Runner steals it. Altogether, the cards fromDown the White Niledeepen the interactions between Corp and Runner, raising the stakes and layering them in new bluffs and stratagems.

Win-Win Propositions

When you playAndroid: Netrunneras the Corp, one of your first and most important choices is to decide which agendas to include in your deck. The importance of this choice was reinforced by 2013 World Champion Jens Erickson in his article,"A New Golden Age,"and it's a choice that's given more fuel in theKitara Cyclewith an assortment of powerful new agendas, including several that reward the Corp whether they're scored or stolen.

No Corp wants to have its agendas stolen—although there are rumors that the Weyland Consortium has left a few rather loosely guarded as bait for the unwary Runner—but stolen agendas are a part ofAndroid: Netrunner. So why not make sure you get something from your agendas, even if they're stolen?

Down the White Niletakes the rare "scored or stolen" trigger and applies it to the Corporation's benefit on no fewer than two new agendas—Bacterial Reprogramming(Down the White Nile, 33) andSSL Endorsement(Down the White Nile, 38).

Previously, the "scored or stolen" trigger appeared on just one agenda, Jinteki'sImproved Protein Source(Fear the Masses, 105), a rare four-advance, three-point agenda that gave the Runner four credits whenever it was scored or stolen. Now, however, these agendas turn the trigger in the Corp's favor, meaning that your investment is never completely wasted.

Of the two, SSL Endorsement offers the more obvious Corporate reward—free credits. Nine credits over the course of three turns. And while it's certainly better to gain these credits after scoring the agenda and its three points, the credits can go a long way toward easing the hurt of a stolen agenda.

Well, they can help ease the Corp's hurt, anyway. The Runner, on the other hand, might find the agenda making an immediate and powerful contribution to his or her hurt. The three credits your Corp gains from SSL Endorsement are just enough to pay for a singlePunitive Counterstrike(Revised Core Set, 122), and if you have four more credits on hand, you can strip the Runner's accounts withEconomic Warfare(Down the White Nile, 36) before flatlining him or her with two copies of Punitive Counterstrike. There aren't many Runners who can survive six meat damage.

Bacterial Reprogramming, meanwhile, is every bit as subtle, insidious, and forward-thinking as Jinteki, itself. Whenever the agenda is scored or stolen, you may look at the top seven cards of your R&D, add any number of them to HQ, trash any number of them, and arrange the rest in any order.

This does two things for you.

First, it can help you rebound more quickly from the loss of your agenda. Perhaps, if you're working with the Weyland Consortium to arrange a Punitive Counterstrike or two, it may even help you bounce right back into victory. After all, there are few better ways to set up your card combos than by gaining immediate access to the top seven cards of your deck, filtering out all those that may be unwanted in the next turn or two.

Second, the card serves as a silent check on the Runner's deep dives. While the Runner generally views cards likeThe Maker's Eye(Revised Core Set, 43) andHQ Interface(Revised Core Set, 26) as valuable tools to help him or her access multiple cards with a single run, Bacterial Reprogramming threatens to transform those deep-access runs into painful reminders that Corporate secrets are best left alone.

Since cards are always accessed one at a time—and because Bacterial Reprogramming triggers immediately after it's accessed and stolen—you can use it to fetch yourSnare!(Revised Core Set, 82) and guarantee the Runner accesses it next. If the Runner accesses Bacterial Reprogramming at the beginning of a deep run on R&D, you can place one or two copies of Snare! atop your deck and force the Runner to access them—without any chance to jack out. Similarly, if the Runner's using a couple HQ Interfaces to access three cards from HQ and accesses Bacterial Reprogramming early, you can reshape your HQ, pulling Snare! from R&D and ditching the cards in HQ that aren't Snare!

Of course, there are other ways you can use the agenda to reshape your R&D and HQ, but the immediate gratification of dealing three net damage and handing out a tag is hard to overlook.